HOW CHIROPRACTIC WORKS IN YOUR SLEEP
Joe Ierano BSC DC MACC BCAO
How Chiropractic Might Work in your Sleep

When we are asleep the special sense organs display different qualities and quantities of perceptive input to the brain, from our waking hours. Either they block or alter sensory input - so stimulation is minimal or different. (Special sense organs would be eyes, ears, nose, etc.)

For example, the eyes can't see when you darken your room and close the eyes (though the visual part of the brain may be actively "seeing" dreams), and the ears are not getting any major input unless the sound is loud or significant enough. But did you ever notice how sound is filtered...like traffic noise or distant cicadas? How about 'white noise'?

This is not so simple for the joint receptors. We have to be aware of gravity. We have to know where we are in space. Thats why we don't fall out of bed! Thus joint, muscle and ligament receptors around the spine are active all the time. But the body has tolerance, and problems may appear earlier than you feel them. By the time your spinal problems are keeping you awake, your body has lost its ability to attenuate pain signals.

Then your nerves say "wakey, wakey" till you do something about it!

Poor spinal function or spinal nerve irritation (subluxation) may feed nociceptive (pain) input to the brain. If pain is feeding into the nervous system this will have an effect of altering input to the brain that is constant and does not shut off when we sleep. You can treat the pain with drugs, which may have short term beneficial effects but adverse long term effects.Things like massage, acupuncture and the rest of the things you can do to muscles can surely help too.

But joints need specific attention.

Pain will then also disturb the part of the brain that controls alertness and consciousness. The reticular formation can be stimulated excessively by pain and actually keep the brain from going into a "lower" conscious state to permit sleep. That is why one of the common reports after an adjustment is "I was tired, fell to sleep quickly, and had a good nights sleep".
Or "that is the best sleep I had in x years!".

So the effects of chiropractic during sleep are real. Beneficial because if the spinal joints are irritating the nervous system because of misalignment, poor function or pain, the chiropractic adjustment can correct this leading to restoration of proprioceptive joint input into the brain and over ride the pain input that actually alters consciousness.

You can work on the muscles, but the specific chiropractic adjustment addresses joint input/output issues with precision and the right kind of vibration for the brain to realise a degree of permanence.

So chiropractic care is essential for the normality of signals coming from the spine that map out body positioning in space while we sleep. It's also true that if the spine is under any joint stress that a painless night of sleep is unlikely, and many people may develop insomnia because of spinal problems.

Clinically, insomnia is a most common reported health problem that coincides with spinal pain in my office. It can sometimes be a great way to avoid dangerous sleeping pills.